


The Spell You Cast

by Anam_Writes



Series: Anam's Commission Library [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Claude has zero self-preservation in the face of mystery, F/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, cosmic horror, mermaid au, or pretty ladies with mysteries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25909096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anam_Writes/pseuds/Anam_Writes
Summary: The spell may prove fatal, my love. We have yet to see....“I thought you were smarter than this, but apparently I must tell you,” Tiana said. “Claude, do not drink and then swim in the ocean. There! I have done my motherly dues. You can leave.”“I wasn’t drunk,” he said. “And I wasn’t swimming. I walked.”“You walked?” Tiana’s brow raised. “Into the ocean?”Claude nodded.For his pains, Claude received but a piece of advice.“One Riegan to another,” Tiana said. “Don’t look too far out at the sea.”
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: Anam's Commission Library [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875259
Comments: 12
Kudos: 95





	The Spell You Cast

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pelusoart (chellmibell)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chellmibell/gifts).



> I was so flippin' excited about this one. Cosmic horror?? Someone wanted me to write MERMAIDS AND COSMIC HORROR AND CLAUDELETH???
> 
> Be still, my heart!
> 
> I am happy with how this one turned out and I hope you all will agree. Probably my fav since "And So the Dragon Wakes."

The villa’s foyer was nearly done. Sudsing water was dried over the dark, patterned tiles: abstractions of flowers, wind, stars and moons etched into pearly black stone. A maid was finishing the last corner, near the wide marble staircase, when the door opened. A man leaned all his weight to slide through the tall, ornate, mahogany entry unaided. He only managed a sliver of space for him to slip through before stumbling over the corner of the door. 

“Prince Khalid,” the maid stood, wiping dirt from her apron and bowing her head before stepping to help him cross the floor. 

The prince held up his hand, did not look in her eye, and walked. His shoulders slumped, weighted under drenched garments, burdened with salt it expelled in rivulets of water running freely onto the tile. He walked up the stairs, watched by the maid and went quietly to his bed. 

An old matron assigned to his care came in a quarter hour later to chide. He rolled from the bed when she stole sopping sheets from under him. He laid on his back, staring up at his arched ceiling, and he wondered. 

He wondered. 

…

The prince sent an arrangement of fruits and berries, as well as a couple extra gold coins to the maid. Her little boys loved strawberries, he remembered, and made sure there were more of those than balance called for. His matron got a kiss on her wizened cheek and a bottle of her favourite brandy.

His mother, having only heard of the entry, got a tap on her door. 

“I thought you were smarter than this, but apparently I must tell you,” Tiana said. “Claude, do not drink and then swim in the ocean. There! I have done my motherly dues. You can leave.”

“I wasn’t drunk,” he said. “And I wasn’t swimming. I walked.”

“You walked?” Tiana’s brow raised. “Into the ocean?”

Claude nodded. 

For his pains, Claude received but a piece of advice. 

“One Riegan to another,” Tiana said. “Don’t look too far out at the sea.” 

…

Claude looked out at the horizon, where the stars kissed the north sea. He stood in the upper garden, a deck above the shore. Surely it was safe to watch from here.

He did not know what he was looking for, for all he could recall of that night was the bustle of a party he had to escape and the comfort of frigid water ‘round his ankles. And wonder, yes; he had wondered. 

Had he been the first Riegan to?

Claude considered his mothers words, the lullabies she sang him as a boy: of Derdriu, of sea claiming more Riegans than age: a family curse. Had they looked out too far and been pulled along into the waves, beneath the stars?

His gaze went up, traced the constellation of a wyvern’s wing down towards the waters - one last look before going in to sleep. That’s when he caught it, reflected moonlight on thick, opalescent scale. He blinked at the spectrum of colours shining off the armoured tail, eyes drawing to the flesh clawing up a jagged rock that emerged on low tide. 

Claude squinted to make out the silhouette. At first, he saw it as some great sea beast swallowing a drenched woman down his maw. The closer he looked, however - 

He wondered at her, looking up into the sky, perched upon one of the rocks that appeared with the low tide. Her tail had flicked, catching light to fling into Claude’s eye. He had stepped in deeper to meet her. Then deeper. Deeper. Deeper. The last thing he saw before he was completely submerged was her eyes, coming down from the skies to meet his.

\- he recognized her the same instant his gut hit the railing, stopping him in his tracks from going further to her. The air knocked from him, brought him back. He let his nails bite into his palm, keeping him from the compulsion to jump.

She settled into place, laying on her stomach. Her chin came up, her face as lovely as he recalled - his nails dug ‘til he bled - and her eyes were set upwards once more. This time she did not look to the skies but to him. Jade eyes on deep green; he caught her sights. 

…

“What did you mean?”

Tiana sat in the drawing room. She peered up from a treatise to look at him, but did not cease reclining her feet on her son’s chaise. 

“Before I decided to visit, you should have warned me how odd it would be,” Tiana sighed. “You did not even knock.”

“Mother,” he said. “What did you mean ‘Don’t look too far out at the sea?’”

“You over think,” his mother said. She turned a page. “Ever since you were a boy. I meant what I said; no metaphor intended.”

“I know,” Claude said. “But why?”

…

Claude’s finger guided him along the worn, stained margins of the tome his mother had given him. It told a tale, much the same as he’d been told as a boy, but longer. 

_In days before writing, in nights before magic, there was a great Lady who flew in the skies. She was pushed from her nest and searched years through the cosmos for a place to rest. It was Fódlan she chose, for the deep green of her canopies, as the place she and all her children would roost._

_But the Lady grew proud, and her children too. They called her Goddess and lorded her over all mankind._

_The King of Liberation, with his Ten Elites, pushed back the false gods from the nation they’d made, their Nabatea. They drove them into the north sea and claimed Fódlan once more for humanity._

What came next Tiana had never shared before.

_Riegan was charged with keeping watch of Fódlan’s northern shores. He raised Derdriu on the waves, a monument to their final battle and a tower from which to guard._

_Meawhile, beneath the sea, the false gods changed their sky-bound form to live in the waters. Dearly do they miss the sky, and so they come to surface to long after it. Should any human bare witness to their longing, a spell will they cast. They will pull, with their beauty, the people of Fódlan to watery graves as payment for the wings they lost._

…

Claude was there for the flowers. He could hear the rush of the waves on the sand, glance to the rocks and the sea foam, tell were there movement in his sight lines; but, Claude was there for the flowers. 

It was when he leaned in, taking scent of a bloom, that he noticed the flick of tail above the shallows. He froze, waited, tugged too hard on his ear. She came writhing with the next current, pulling herself over the sand, sticking to bare skin. 

Breath caught in his throat as she arranged her hair to fall over her back, out of her face and her eyes. Then she brought her armoured tail up, perched herself like a lady kneeling in a flowing dress. She looked up, met his eyes, stared. 

Claude did not step forward. He did not crash into the railing. This time, Claude stepped to the side and walked into the villa and down his stairs. He was here. He felt himself. There was no trance to pull him into the waves, no spell cast where he could no longer see her. Still he walked through his mahogany doors and out towards the creature. 

If she meant to take him this time, it was not among her waves, not to drown. Why, was the only question left to ask. 

Claude followed the stone path down to the beach and saw her still kneeling. Her brow was creased, her eyes scanning the balcony. She was looking for him; he recognized that as surely as he did the lie that he stepped out to see the flowers. There was something frantic in her searching, until a pebble scuffed his boot and her attention was drawn to him. 

The creature made no sound, no move. She only stared. 

“Can you speak?” he asked, being sure to measure the distance between her and the water, then her and himself. 

“Yes,” her voice came out ashy. Disuse, he thought. 

“Have you come to drown me?” He asked. 

Her eyes widened. “No.”

Claude relaxed. He rested his hand on his chest and gave her a bow. “I am Claude von Riegan. What can I call you?”

“Byleth,” she told him. “You have very pretty eyes, Claude von Riegan.”

Claude raised his head up from his bow. When he did, he saw the slightest pinch of her lips upwards. A smile?

“Thank you.”

Byleth’s name echoed through his head all night long. The image of her nodding and crawling back to the waters still fresh from their introduction. The urge to follow her was fresher still. 

…

Claude was there for the fish. He heard the north west coast was excellent for fishing this season. He was there for the fish, and nothing else. When Byleth’s head popped out by the pier and she pulled herself up to sit on the wood paneling, well away from his own seat, that was simply coincidence. 

“Hello, Claude,” she said. 

“Byleth,” he nodded. 

He stared deep into the waters where he had cast his line and felt the old wood bend as Byleth shifted her weight. 

“You haven’t made a catch,” Byleth noted. Claude went on in silence, still looking pointedly away. “If I lure you some fish may I…”

Claude resisted the compulsion to look. “May you what?”

“May I see them?” She asked. “Your eyes.”

Claude hoped sincerely she did not know what the pink in his cheeks and at the tips of his ears meant. “Maybe.”

Byleth did not negotiate further. On a maybe, on a chance, she jumped in. Not moments later, silver, reflective and chrome, rushed in the water beneath Claude’s feet. His line was tugged, tugged, tugged, one after the other, ‘til fresh fish was piled in his basket. 

Byleth lifted herself back onto the pier, closer this time. She did not ask, simply waited. 

Claude looked up, placing his rod down and giving a hard pinch to his thigh when he looked back to her. She said nothing, did nothing, compelled nothing from him. She blinked twice, like a curious fawn, and leaned towards him. He dared not move when a small hand fell to his leg and scale brushed against trousers. 

Then she gasped. 

“I did not mean-” She said nothing else. She only shook her head and jumped into the water, leaving Claude cold and confused.

…

Claude was here for the shells; pretty things he had never thought to collect before. It brought him to the peace of a pleasant little grove where Byleth reclined in comfort. 

“I have some in a net below,” she told him. “My grandmother likes them.”

“You have a grandmother,” Claude asked, placing a pink auger in his pack. 

“I do,” Byleth answered.

He felt silly for imagining she would not have a family: grandparents, parents, perhaps a sibling. 

“Humans do not live long enough to be grandparents, do they?” She asked.

“Not always,” he said. “But sometimes.”

“Will you?” 

Claude laughed, only a little taken aback. He turned from the shallows of the grove to look at her. He did not pinch himself. His hand reached out, wiping wet hair from her face. She reddened at the touch, leaned in. Only then did he back away with a start. 

“I might,” he chuckled. “I’m no diviner. I may grow old enough to be one and not be.”

“That’s hard to imagine,” Byleth said. 

He tried not to let that go to his head.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Claude changed the subject. “Your hair always gets in your eyes up above.”

“It’s hard to see,” she answered. “So, yes. It bothers me.”

“I could fix that for you,” he said. “Sit here; I’ll braid it.”

She sat on the stone and Claude set aside his pack. It took hours to braid through the thick, tangled, jade locks. When he was done he could admire it as some of his best work. 

“Will you teach me how to do that?” She asked, brushing the braid over her shoulder as he came to sit by her. 

Claude smiled, took some hanging strands from his kamarbandh, and began to show her a basic braid. She reach out to take his hand before the lesson really began. 

“Your palms,” she said, thumb running over the irate half moons he’d made there.

“I may have scratched them a little too hard with my nails,” he said. “Nothing to fret over; it will heal.”

“Just your nail?” She frowned. 

Byleth looked up, into his eyes. She sighed before raising his palm, pressing a kiss to the skin. Claude nearly fell into the shallows with the shock. Her eyes never broke their contact. 

“It would be a shame,” she told him. “No, a great loss, for me to lose your eyes. Keep them safe, Claude. Promise me?”

Claude thought back to Almyran court, to how many cups filled with poison he’d discarded the very night he first saw her. He’d told many lies to himself since. He was unsure he could tell this one. 

“I can’t promise that,” he said. “My life is too unpredictable.”

Byleth did not protest, or argue. She only gave her understanding, and went back into her depths. 

…

Claude went to the shore for the seaweed, the driftwood, the salt water to boil. Byleth did not come. He was not sure what offense he had made, but it seemed severe. It was on the edge of acceptance that the day came. 

His mother stood with him atop the foyer’s stairwell. They were both clad for a leisurely afternoon ride. 

The door opened. 

Mahogany groaned, announcing a woman on wobbling legs slipping in through the crack. Long hair was swept back in a braid, messily done, seaweed caught in the plaits. She slouched, as though skin had absorbed the weight of a lifetime of salt water. She dripped along the tile as she stepped slow, clumsy, watching her feet at first. 

“Byleth,” Claude said, taking a step down but freezing when she met his eyes. 

She held a hand up, then out, reaching. 

“My grandmother told me of the tree tops,” Byleth said, taking quaking steps forward, to him. “She said the canopy was a deep green, shifting gold beneath the torrents of her wings. She said as birds fly south and fish follow the great current, she knew in the strands of her being that place was hers to rest in.”

Byleth’s feet hit the first stair with a wet slap. Tiana’s hand readied on her hilt. Byleth kept forward in an impulse he recognized, like walking into waves. She was coming to him; he had lured her. His mother was primed to strike. Byleth would drown; he would drown her. 

“Stop,” he ordered Tiana. “She’s harmless.”

Tiana had no chance to protest before the Nabatean went on. 

“Your eyes,” Byleth told him. “I did not know what it meant until I saw your eyes. I couldn’t let you drown, Claude. And I can’t let you-”

Claude lunged forward, catching Byleth against sturdy, broad shoulders. She pushed back just enough to see. 

“Tell me what to do to keep them open, Claude,” she said. Her gaze flicked town to his lips. Her hand tucked a curl behind his ear and followed his beard down the line of his sharp jaw. “To keep those eyes on me.”

As though he could look away, Claude thought. As though anything but gouging could keep him from searching the horizons for her. 

“Change of plans,” Claude said, shrugging out of his riding jacket and wrapping it ‘round Byleth’s shoulders. “Help me set up a room mother, we have a new guest.”


End file.
